Catweasel Mk1-3 not suitable for archiving - why?

[Philip Pemberton]

Jim Battle wrote:
> Prior to the Mk IV design, writing to hard sectored formats was not 
> really possible (unless you count writing a track blindly with semi 
> arbitrary rotational phase, then attempting to read it back and starting 
> over if it didn't work counts as possible).  Mk IV has added some 
> mechanisms for having the hardware wait until index/sector marks are 
> seen before initiating a write.

I'm not quite sure how this would apply to the Amiga though - that uses a 
softsector MFM format.

Looks like I'll mark this up as an unsourced statement - I can't find anyone 
other than SPS calling the Catweasel unsuitable for archiving, nor can I find 
any reason why it's so important to use an Amiga drive and controller (except 
maybe the old scientific rule of 'keep variables to a minimum').

Just that if there was a problem, I'd like to at least try and find a 
workaround before I commit my design to copper-and-fibreglass. I can always 
change the microcode and firmware later, but I'd rather get it as close to 
perfect on the first pass as possible...

Thanks,
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